In advance of the major rally tonight in support of the Living Wage bill working it’s way through the City Council, an insider provided this roadmap to their strategy.

The campaign is trying to capitalize on two things at once to generate support:

1) Bloomberg’s vulnerability at a time when he seems increasingly out of touch with struggling, lower-income residents and

2) the city’s laser-like focus on ensuring that taxpayer dollars are wisely invested, after recent revelations of waste (CityTime etc.) and growing concern over strained city resources.

We argue that the living wage bill will reduce the costs of poverty by enabling more working people to be self-sufficient-which means fewer residents will rely on expensive safety programs and public assistance and contribute greater sums to the local tax base and economy.

And we are actively using some of City Hall’s own worst stats against them: for example, this figure that a record number of working New Yorkers, 1.8. million, now rely on food stamps because they don’t earn enough to support themselves, the highest number since Bloomberg has been in office…!:

The bill has been revised and now “would exclude businesses that make less than $1 million in revenue annually from having to pay their workers more than the state’s current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.”